


Dreams

by heipaoshi



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 16:33:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16936779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heipaoshi/pseuds/heipaoshi
Summary: The marriage technically doesn’t count.





	Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on tumblr in 2016 after the Laurel and Oliver "wedding" episode. It's 218 now, and Laurel Lance is still my favourite fictional character, and she still deserved better.

“I never deserved that love. And you always deserved better.”

 

She says, “I know. But it’s always been my choice to give you that love.”

 

The marriage technically doesn’t count. There were no witnesses. A court could argue that here wasn’t even a bride. By the time everything fades away, even the ring on his finger is gone.

 

Still, when it’s all over he finds himself scrolling through wedding sites looking for the familiar bands. It’s easy enough to find his own ring, and he has it shipped as fast as the website allows. He wears it, and says nothing when his team stares curiously at his hands during training.

 

Felicity haltingly asks him if it’s the ring from their brief engagement, and Oliver reassures her that it’s not. The relief on her face is palpable, and they both feel that chapter of their lives closing. They’re better friends for it.

 

He finds the ring’s partner in a pawn shop. Apparently, it’s from 1939, made for a wedding that never happened because the groom was drafted off to war and never returned. He keeps the ring on his bedside table. He doesn’t look at it, or pine away for the woman he had wanted to wear it, but it comforts him that its there, that what he and Laurel had shared in his and Sara’s hallucination was real enough that her ring existed.

 

And when a smiling, dark-haired woman asks him out on a date, he doesn’t hesitate before sheepishly showing her his left hand. “Sorry,” he’ll say. “I’m already spoken for.”

 

To him, it’s not a lie.


End file.
